


First Construction

by Pargoletta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Assault, Classical Music, Concerts, Gen, Musicians, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John’s plan had been simply to take Sherlock out for a pleasant birthday excursion, with no cases and no crime scenes.  But, as it is said, man plans, and God laughs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Principle of Form

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Arthur Conan Doyle, nor any of the various dramatic incarnations thereof. No profit is being made from this work.
> 
>  
> 
> Note: Welcome to this story! It’s just a short little thing that I thought of after going to a percussion concert with a friend. One of the works on the program was John Cage’s 1939 _First Construction in Metal_ , which involves a pianist who has an assistant who leans into the open piano to tap the strings with metal rods. It’s a position that’s not without some risk, and I asked myself, “what if something went wrong?” And thus was a new story born.
> 
> The three works described in this part are David Lang’s 1991 _The Anvil Chorus_ , James Tenney’s 1971 _Koan: Having Never Written a Note for Percussion_ , and the aforementioned _First Construction in Metal_. There are good performances of all of these works available on YouTube, if you’d like to hear them for yourself. Enjoy this story, and I’ll see you at the end!

**1\. The Principle of Form**

 

“A Jack the Ripper tour?” Sherlock mused. “No. Too obvious, even for you. It’s too late for Madame Tussaud’s, and we wouldn’t have taken a taxi, since it’s so close to home. The Anaesthesia Heritage Centre?”

John laughed. “Nope.”

“Am I close?”

“Not a bit. Enjoy the ride, and you’ll find out when we get there.” 

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in frustration and lapsed into silence. John sank back against the seat of the taxi. He glanced out of the window and allowed himself a secret smile at having managed to outwit Sherlock. He had been carefully obvious about Sherlock’s Christmas presents, specially ordered from the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia several weeks in advance, and he had even allowed Sherlock to “discover” the crystal engraving of the skeleton of a pair of infant conjoined twins two nights before Christmas. Sherlock’s combined smugness over the discovery and his genuine pleasure in the present had completely blinded him to John’s plans for his birthday. John found himself enjoying Sherlock’s excitement, much more than he anticipated enjoying the gift itself.

The taxi turned onto Silk Street and drew to a stop. John paid the driver as Sherlock stepped onto the pavement, a look of intrigued wonder spreading across his face. “The Guildhall School,” he said. “We’re here to see –“

“A concert,” John said. He took a quick glance at the tickets in their plain envelope. “The school’s percussion ensemble. You’ve been talking so much about odd music lately, I thought you’d enjoy it.”

He handed the tickets to an usher and received two programmes in exchange. He gave one to Sherlock, who opened it right away and began to pore over it as John guided him to their seats.

“Lang, Tenney, Cage,” Sherlock said. “Fascinating. I’ve never had the opportunity to hear their music performed live before.”

John smiled, in satisfaction at a job well done. “Happy birthday, Sherlock.”

The curtain rose, revealing an assortment of drums, boxes, bells, and xylophones. John glanced at the programme and saw that the first piece listed was called _The Anvil Chorus_. That, he decided, was the one flaw in an otherwise excellent plan; it was entirely possible that an entire evening of listening to musicians bang on drums and boxes might drive him mad, or at least make him long for the more familiar squawks and wails of Sherlock’s violin. But Sherlock sat next to him, looking utterly entranced, and John decided that he could put up with an evening of noise in return for the expression that was playing across Sherlock’s features at that moment.

The house lights dimmed, and the audience applauded as a young woman dressed in black with her hair in a tight ponytail walked out onto the stage and bowed. Without a word, she took up her position amidst the instruments and picked up a set of mallets. John plastered a smile across his face and attempted to steel himself for what the programme assured him would be seven minutes of pounding, headache-inducing noise.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that the piece began relatively calmly, with metallic notes that were far more rounded and resonant than he had expected, and that the jarring thumps of the bass drum were farther apart than he had feared. There was even a melody of sorts. After a minute or so, John was able to relax and even enjoy the ever-changing texture of chimes, thumps, pops, and clangs, and he found himself positively enjoying a softly tinkling section towards the end. When the musician finished with a final thump of the bass drum and came out from behind the instruments to take her bow, John found himself applauding enthusiastically along with the rest of the audience.

“That,” Sherlock murmured as the curtain fell, “was an excellent performance. It gains so much when you see it live. Being able to trace the textures and rhythmic lines.”

“Yup. Absolutely.” John smiled and nodded.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Not a clue. I’m just glad you’re enjoying it.”

That wrung a smile out of Sherlock. “A fine birthday present, John. Not quite as exciting as a good murder, of course, but most satisfactory.”

John gave a laugh that came out as half a snort. “Well, you know, I can’t just order a murder for you as a present, of course.” Then a thought struck him, and he glanced at Sherlock. “Er . . . you _do_ know that, right? This isn’t another one of those little talks we need to have?”

“Certainly not _now_. They’re about to play _Koan_.”

Sherlock directed John’s attention to the stage, where a large metal gong now hung from a frame in front of the curtain. Two large felt mallets lay on a pillow in front of the gong. John glanced quickly at his programme, but was only able to determine that the full name of the piece was _Koan: Having Never Written A Note For Percussion_ before a young man, also dressed in black, walked out onto the stage, bowed, took up the mallets and seated himself cross-legged on the pillow facing the gong, his back to the audience.

For the longest time, it seemed to John that nothing was happening. Then he became aware of a subtle rumbling, almost too quiet to hear. A few minutes after that, he realized that the young man had in fact been working at the gong for the entire time, slowly drawing an increasing volume of low, shimmering sound out of the thing. John began to feel uneasy, and stole a glance at Sherlock. Sherlock was sitting in his seat, his eyes closed, his hands pressed together below his chin, his whole body quivering in rapt attention, almost as if he were vibrating in sympathy with the gong. The gong grew louder, and the sound seemed to expand to fill the entire concert hall, and John decided that the better part of valour was simply to surrender to the experience.

He wasn’t sure what happened for some time afterwards. Powerful waves of sound surged through him, and sometimes he thought that he heard strange, unearthly melodies humming along just below his consciousness. When he tried closing his eyes like Sherlock, he saw strange colours flowing and shifting along the insides of his eyelids. For an instant, he thought he was almost able to taste the sound, but afterwards, he never could find the words to describe the flavour. 

After what seemed like an eternity, the wall of sound thinned, and began to reduce itself. The strange melodies and flavours receded, and John was able to think again. The shimmer of the gong tapered off as slowly as it had risen, and it took John a moment to realise that the work was over. The gong player rose smoothly to his feet to take his bow, and John applauded politely along with the rest of the audience. A surreptitious check of his watch revealed that the whole experience had lasted only twenty minutes.

“That was incredible,” John said.

Sherlock simply nodded, and took a few deep breaths, as if he had just woken from a refreshing sleep.

A thought struck John. “Is this what it’s like when you’re high?” he asked. “Because I can definitely see the appeal.”

Sherlock glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Possibly. Perhaps I should get you high so that you have some basis for comparison.”

John sighed. “Just warn me first. If I’m going to have an experience, I’d at least like to know that I am having that experience.”

“Boring.”

The curtain rose before Sherlock had a chance to say anything else, revealing another large array of xylophones, blocks, drums, what appeared to be hanging sheets of metal, and a piano. The programme announced that the piece performed on these instruments would be John Cage’s _First Construction in Metal_. Having enjoyed the previous two pieces much more than he had expected to do, John found himself much better prepared to appreciate the opening crash of the metal sheets and the clanking, rhythmic melody that made him think of documentary films about heavy industry.

He was especially intrigued by the piano, which was occupied by two people. One young man was sitting at the keyboard, but the second was stationed at the side of the piano. The instrument’s lid was fully propped open, and the assistant leaned into the instrument, doing things inside that John could not see, but which looked vaguely like a mechanic rooting around in the bonnet of a car. Occasionally, the pianist would stand up and reach into the piano as well.

John suspected that Sherlock knew not only what the musicians were doing, but why they were doing it and what effect they were having on the sound of the instrument, and would be more than happy to explain it in great detail during the interval. So he sat back and did not worry about anything other than watching the spectacle of this group of clearly talented performers producing distinctly odd music. He was especially impressed with the rumbling of the metal sheets, recalling a long-ago grammar school performance of _The Tempest_ , in which he had been assigned to rattle similar sheets offstage to make the sound of thunder. For a moment, he lost himself in fond memories of the play and his desperate crush on the sixth-form girl who had played Miranda. Jill Bellwood, that had been her name.

The pianist’s assistant reached out to adjust something inside the piano, and brushed the piano lid support lightly with his shoulder. In an instant, the support buckled, and the lid crashed down on the assistant’s spine, pinning him half inside the instrument, and startling the rest of the musicians into silence. 

John was on his feet before he realised it, climbing over Sherlock’s knees and making his way towards the stage. The audience sat frozen, not yet certain if this event was part of the show or not. This moment of shock would be the first, best time to control a situation in which at least one man was clearly gravely injured. As John reached the stage, he saw blood pooling on the piano keyboard, and he realised that the pianist’s left arm was also crushed and trapped beneath the lid. Sherlock caught up to John just as the pianist began to cry out, and boosted him onto the stage.

“I’m a doctor,” John said. He turned and spotted a stagehand cowering off to the side. “Lower the curtain, now!” The stagehand turned and grabbed for a rope, and the curtain came down, separating the audience from the blood and chaos on the stage.

One of the metal-sheet players turned and reached out to the assistant. John seized her arm. “Don’t touch him!” he barked. “Call 999 now, tell them we have two casualties, and we need an ambulance.”

The metal-sheet player scurried off the stage. John turned his attention to the piano. The assistant hung unmoving, half in and half out of the instrument. John reached in and located the assistant’s carotid pulse by feel. It was weak, but present. “He’s alive,” he reported. “What’s his name?”

“Nicholas Barker,” the conductor said. “Goes by Nick.”

“Nick?” John called. “Nick, can you hear me?”

The assistant moaned.

“Nick, my name is John Watson, and I’m a doctor. We’ll get you out of there as soon as possible. Don’t move. The piano lid is on your back, and we don’t want you hurt any more than you already are.” John waved to a girl who had played one of the xylophones. “Come over here and stay with him. Don’t let him move too much, and don’t lift that lid until the ambulance arrives.”

The pianist had begun to scream in earnest, and was now trying to pull his arm out from under the piano lid. John flicked a glance at Sherlock, who hurried to stand behind the pianist and put his hand on his shoulders.

“Stop shouting,” Sherlock told him. “Let him work. This is the best doctor I know.”

“Hurts!” the pianist gasped.

“I know,” John said. “What’s your name?”

“Charles Milton.”

“All right, Charles. Stay calm. Sherlock, take his hand.” John looked Charles in the eye. “Don’t move. Squeeze Sherlock’s hand if you need to. I’m just going to look at your arm here.”

He tried to angle his head so that he could see the extent of the injury, but Charles writhed on the piano bench. John sighed. “Sherlock, help out.”

Sherlock thought for an instant. “The piano,” he began, “was invented in Italy at the turn of the eighteenth century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, as an attempt to combine the virtues of the harpsichord and the clavichord.”

Sherlock continued reciting the history of the piano in a slow monotone, and Charles began to relax just enough that John could look at his arm. The lid had impacted a few inches above the wrist, crushing and mangling flesh and bone, but it did not seem to have severed the arm. There was not as much bleeding as John had feared, as the weight of the lid had sealed most of the affected blood vessels. He turned his most reassuring smile on Charles.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve got a good bash on your arm, but everything’s still attached.”

“Th-that’s good, right?” Charles gasped.

“Huge. Much easier for the doctors to deal with, having it all still together.”

“Am I going to be all right?”

John smiled. “We’ll know more when we can get you to hospital.”

Just out of Charles’s sight, Sherlock frowned at John and then glanced at the shattered piano lid support. Before he could say anything, sirens wailed and drew to a stop outside. Four paramedics hurried onto the stage, carrying a backboard and large medical kits. 

“Two casualties,” John told them. “Nick Barker over there, crush injury to the spine. Breathing, weak pulse, he’s altered, needs the backboard. Charles Milton here, crush injury to the left arm, breathing, strong pulse, fully conscious. I’m Dr. John Watson, examined them on the scene.”

“Thanks, love,” the lead paramedic said. 

She and John organised Sherlock and the members of the percussion ensemble so that two people could hold Nick and Charles steady as two others lifted the piano lid. Sherlock assigned himself to the team lifting the lid, and peered intently at the broken support as he did so. The paramedics eased Nick out of the piano and strapped him to the backboard. They attached Charles to an oxygen mask, put an IV in his whole arm, and splinted his injured arm before loading him onto a stretcher trolley. 

“I’ll ride with them to hospital,” the conductor said. “Get in touch with their families from there. Donna, you’re in charge until I get back. Take everyone to the green room. I’ll ring you as soon as I know anything.”

John and the others stood back to let the ambulance party depart. Sherlock glanced around the scene, and his eyebrow twitched in a way that John knew all too well. 

“Don’t let them leave, John,” Sherlock murmured. “And don’t let them touch anything. I’ve texted Lestrade, and he’ll be here shortly. This wasn’t an accident.”

John nodded. “Right.” He glanced around. “Donna? Which one are you?”

A tall blonde girl who had been playing a gong raised her hand.

“Good. All of you, follow Donna into the green room. Donna, you’d best get the kettle on. Hot sweet tea for everyone. Don’t worry about the mess. We’ll call your teachers, get it all sorted.”

With a few nudges, the musicians started moving. They stumbled off the stage in a line, leaving Sherlock and John alone in the ruins of the concert.

“All right, Sherlock,” John said. “What do you mean, this wasn’t an accident?”


	2. The Principle of Organization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter titles for this story come from a quote from John Cage, the composer of _First Construction in Metal_. He wrote that:
> 
>  
> 
> _The principle of form will be our only constant connection to the past. Although the great form of the future will not be as it was in the past, at one time the fugue, at another time the sonata, it will be related to these as they are to each other: through the principle of organization or man's common ability to think._
> 
>  
> 
> Rather like _Sherlock_ , in a way!

2\. The Principle of Organization

 

Lestrade arrived just as Sherlock began to look around the stage area with the particular glare that he only got when he was concentrating very hard. He arrived through the auditorium entrance, and John heard his footsteps as he climbed onto the stage and fumbled with the curtain. John decided that Sherlock could be left unsupervised for a moment, and went to part the curtain and let Lestrade into what was now the crime scene. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the auditorium, completely empty, with only his and Sherlock’s coats still draped over their seats.

Lestrade took in the broken, blood-smeared piano and the abandoned instruments. “Christ,” he said. “What happened here?”

John scrubbed his hand over his face. “If you can believe it, it was meant to be me taking Sherlock to a concert for his birthday. Except the piano lid fell down and crushed two of the players, and Sherlock thinks it was deliberate.”

“Two players? At that piano?”

“It was a – a modern thing.”

“John Cage,” Sherlock announced, having completed his circuit of the instruments. “The pianist has an assistant who uses a metal rod on the piano strings. And it was definitely a crime.”

“Right.” Lestrade’s jaw hardened. “Murder?”

“We don’t know yet,” John said. “The victims were alive when we sent them to hospital. The rest of the group is sitting in the green room, with instructions not to leave. Officially, they’re waiting for word about the piano players.”

Sherlock flexed his hands and began to pace, three little steps in either direction. “It doesn’t matter. Murder, attempted murder, assault, whatever it was, it was deliberate. Don’t you see? You have to see.”

“See what?” Lestrade asked.

Sherlock whirled around and pointed at the wreckage of the piano. “That’s a concert Steinway. Best-known brand of pianos in the world, lovingly cared for by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, do you really think they’d send one out on stage that wasn’t in top condition? The lid support was sawn nearly through. A fine, clean cut, needed only a little pressure, say, a bump from the pianist’s assistant reaching for a note.”

Lestrade went over to the piano, leaned down, and peered at it, carefully avoiding touching it. After a moment, he straightened and nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s a clean cut. I’m going to call it in.”

“What, bringing in the idiot brigade?” Sherlock scoffed. “I don’t understand, are you actually trying to hinder me?”

“Sherlock.” John put a hand on Sherlock’s elbow.

“I am trying to make this investigation official enough to stand up in court!” Lestrade snapped. “All your puzzle-solving is worthless unless we can convict the bastard who did it, and I need at least Donovan and a SOCO to make that happen.” He breathed in and out, and pulled out his mobile. “I’ll try to have them send Ormsby, not Anderson.”

Sherlock had the grace to look at least a little bit mollified. John took advantage of the moment. “They’re not here yet, Sherlock,” he said. “What do you think you can do before they get here? Astonish us.”

Lestrade looked up from his phone. “But don’t touch anything.”

John pursed his lips. “So, someone sawed through that lid support. Who’d be awful enough to do something like that?”

“The stagehand,” Sherlock said. “But that’s not important right now.”

“What? Not important? Sherlock, there’s two kids in hospital fighting for their lives right now.”

“And how do you know it’s the stagehand?” Lestrade added. “Ten minutes.”

Sherlock sighed. “Obvious. Who else would have had access to a fine saw, enough time alone with the piano to use it and to clean up the sawdust afterwards, and the skills to push a concert grand piano onto a stage and prop the lid without letting it fall until the right moment? As ever, John, you ask the least relevant questions.”

John rolled his eyes. “Well, what’s the important question, then?”

“Why?” Sherlock said. “Why was it done, and who was the target?”

Lestrade blinked. “Oh. _Cherchez la femme_.”

“Crude, but not entirely inaccurate,” Sherlock said. “Find the target, find the motive, and you’ll find the real criminal.”

“So the stagehand –“

“Basically a hit man. Unimportant.”

“You don’t event want to, you know, ask him who wanted him to do this?” John asked.

Sherlock shrugged. “When the paramedics extracted the musicians. You were too busy helping them – it’s what you do – and you didn’t see the look on the stagehand’s face. He was terrified. If he’d known who asked him to do this, he’d have shouted it out then and there.”

Lestrade scrawled a few lines in his notebook. “So you’re saying this kid – what? Found an unsigned note in his box asking him to tamper with a piano and just went ahead and did it? As – I don’t know, some kind of student prank? How stupid do you have to be to do something like that?”

Sherlock smiled. “Welcome to my world, Detective Inspector. John, go to the box office, get a list of the tickets, who was sitting where.”

“You think the real criminal was in the audience?” John said.

“I don’t think. I know. Go and get the list. I need to think.”

“Right.” John pushed the curtain aside, jumped off of the stage, and strode out through the auditorium.

 

“A seating chart?” the girl in the box office asked. “We don’t really do that. I mean, we have a plan of the seats, so we know what’s taken, and we have the list of people who’ve bought tickets, but there’s no seating plan with names on.”

John shrugged. “Then we’ll just have to combine them. I can do it over on that bench, won’t be any trouble. It’s part of the investigation.”

“Really?” The box office girl looked troubled. “Are they going to be okay, Nick and Charles?”

“Still waiting to hear.”

“I didn’t see it happen, but everyone was talking about it when they left. They said you could see Nick twitching, and that Charles’s whole arm was chopped off.”

John grimaced, and wished with his whole heart that the concert hall had been organised enough to drop the curtain the moment after the piano lid had fallen. But then, he supposed, the stagehand in charge of the curtain had been just as shocked at the results of his handiwork as everyone else. “Last I saw, Charles’s arm was still attached,” he said. “Let’s wait and see what the doctors have to say before we go jumping to conclusions, all right?”

“All right.” The girl gave him the seating chart and a list of the tickets, and John took them over to the bench to start matching names to seats.

Lestrade joined him when he was halfway finished, holding his mobile to his ear with one hand, and dragging Sherlock by the wrist with the other. “Right,” he said into the phone. “Police guard on them at all times, and only hospital personnel or visitors authorised by me – oi, Sherlock, you’re not escaping – and first word to come to this number and no other. Got that? Good.” He ended the call and tugged Sherlock over to the bench where John was working.

“The victims are under police guard at University College Hospital,” he said. “The doctors will call me when they have something to report.”

“Do you have anything now?” John asked.

Lestrade shrugged. “One of them’s being operated on, the other is waiting for a theatre to open up. That’s all I know. How are you coming along?”

“About half done.” John gestured at the seating plan, which he had begun to fill in with names. Sherlock snatched it away and peered at it.

“Close enough,” he said, and turned away. 

Lestrade reached out and grabbed the back of Sherlock’s belt to hold him in place. “Backup’s here,” he explained to John. “Donovan kicked Sherlock out so she and Ormsby could work in peace.”

“They’re not needed,” Sherlock muttered. “I almost have it.” He dropped the seating chart and grasped his head in his hands. “Think, think, think. John, seat E11, what was the name?”

John glanced over the list of tickets, running his finger down the page until he found the correct entry. “Er, Susannah Probert.”

“Excellent.” Sherlock pulled his mobile from his pocket and began to poke at it. “Facebook, Twitter . . . this doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t?” Lestrade tugged at Sherlock’s belt to reel him in.

“Susannah Probert is another piano student,” Sherlock said. “Based on her social media profiles, she’s friendly with both Nicholas Barker and Charles Milton, but not romantically involved with either of them, never has been. Damn.”

“Disappointed?” John asked.

“No, but it would have been – wait.” Sherlock’s gaze turned inward for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. “Of course! Brilliant. John, you’ve cut to the heart of the question. I’d assumed that the target of the assault was either Nicholas Barker or Charles Milton.”

“It’s not?” John asked.

“Who else could it be?” Lestrade added.

Sherlock ignored their questions in favour of one of his own. “John, what are the chances that Charles Milton will lose his arm?”

John thought for a moment. “Minimal,” he said. “The weight of the piano lid wasn’t as much as some crush injuries, the ambulance arrived quickly, got him out inside the golden hour. Can’t say how much of a future he has playing Beethoven, but he’ll probably keep his arm.”

“Probably. Which means there’s an outside chance he won’t keep it.” Sherlock smiled. “That’s all I need. We can go talk to the ensemble members now.”

“We can?” Lestrade said. “What are they going to tell us?”

“They’re going to confirm Susannah Probert’s reasons for arranging the assault on her fellow students,” Sherlock said. “I’ll give you instructions while we walk.” He twisted out of Lestrade’s grasp and strode back toward the auditorium. John and Lestrade hurried to follow him.

 

The percussion ensemble members were chattering softly to each other in the green room, but fell silent instantly when Sherlock opened the door. Donna rose to her feet. “How are Nick and Charles?” she asked. “Have you heard anything?”

Sherlock gave John a prompting glance, and John cleared his throat. “Er, well, nothing definite yet. There is a chance that Charles could develop acute compartment syndrome, or, er, rhabdomyolysis, might require an amputation.” Which, he did not add, was highly unlikely, although not technically impossible.

But the musicians didn’t know that, and several of them shrieked in horror. Sherlock took advantage of their shock and bore down on them. “Do any of you know Susannah Probert?” he asked. “What would she think of all of this?”

“Susannah?” the girl who had played _The Anvil Chorus_ said. “Oh, God, you’re right. Susannah. Someone’ll have to tell her.”

“She’ll be pleased as punch,” a xylophone player said. “Though she’ll never show it.”

“Well, it would be her big break,” Donna said.

“You think?” the xylophone player countered. “Alex was pretty firm about her.”

Donna shrugged. “Well, if Charles can’t play, who else does Alex have?”

“Alex?” Lestrade asked.

“Alex Ryder,” Donna said. “He’s the director of the percussion ensemble.”

“Precisely,” Sherlock said. He turned to Lestrade. “It’s an auditioned group. Alex Ryder chose all of these musicians personally. Charles Milton joined in October, beating out Susannah Probert, among others, at the auditions.”

“She was angry at Charles?” John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “That was my first thought. Someone was after either Charles or Nick. One or the other, which one was it? But either way, it didn’t make sense. No one could predict when the lid would fall, there’d be no guarantee how badly Nick would be hurt, or if Charles would be in a position to be injured. No, the only thing that was certain to happen was that the concert would be disrupted, the piano smashed, and at least one player bashed about. Nick and Charles weren’t targets, they were incidental. Alex Ryder was the real target.”

“Alex?” the _Anvil Chorus_ girl gasped. “Who’d want to hurt Alex? And why?”

“Susannah Probert,” Sherlock said. “Obviously. He chose another pianist over her at the auditions, she took it personally, tweeted about it at some length, longer than you’d expect for a run-of-the-mill disappointment. She was convinced that Alex Ryder was deliberately trying to stifle her career. She wanted to get back at him, strike him where she thought it would hurt the most. The percussion ensemble, the one he’d kept her out of, the instrument he hadn’t accepted her to play for him. The musicians who actually were playing it were just a bonus at that point.”

The musicians stared at Sherlock, their mouths open in horrified shock. John shut his eyes and shook his head. “Even allowing for artistic temperament, what could possibly make you think of this girl?”

“We can only hope that she’s better at playing the piano than at orchestrating violent acts of revenge. She was stupid and came to the concert tonight,” Sherlock said. “Sat a few seats away from us, breathless with anticipation. I thought she was simply enjoying the music, until the piano lid fell. She was the only person who wasn’t startled. She’d been expecting it, knew it would happen. She just didn’t know when.”

Lestrade sighed. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I’ll take Donovan and go and pick her up.” 

He called to a constable and assigned him to take down contact information for the rest of the percussion ensemble for statements afterward, and then shooed Sherlock and John out of the green room. “They’ve had a shock, they don’t need you two hovering over them. Go home. I don’t suppose you can get your ticket money back?”

John shook his head. “Probably not. They’d played most of the programme. Sherlock, I am so sorry. This was meant to be your birthday present.”

Sherlock shrugged, and smiled. “Oh, John. Even if I didn’t hear the entire concert, I solved a case. And you helped to save Nicholas Barker and Charles Milton. If they come out of this at all well, it’s because of you.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” Sherlock said. “None of the others would have thought to call for help so fast. They might have attempted the rescue themselves and only done more damage, but you stopped them, which incidentally gave me a cleaner crime scene. Surely that’s worth a few minutes of John Cage.”

“When you put it that way,” John said. “Come on, let’s go home. I’ll go out to the shops tomorrow and see if I can find you a recording of that John Cage piece to make up for it.”

“Won’t be as good,” Sherlock said, but his eyes lit up at the prospect of the extra present anyway. John followed him into the auditorium to reclaim their coats, and then out onto the street to hail a cab to take them home.

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who has enjoyed this little short. And it’s out of my head now, so I’m glad of that. It strikes me that I neglected to mention Sherlock’s Christmas presents. You can, in fact, buy some weird and wonderful gifts from the gift shop of the Mütter Museum – properly the College of Physicians of Philadelphia – and they do appear to ship internationally. For $35 plus shipping, you could be the proud owner of a conjoined-twins-skeleton paperweight, just like Sherlock! See you next time.


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